This past week or so we’ve seen a nice dunk from Nuggets center Timofey Mozgov and news broke that Ty Lawson will sign a deal with BC Zalgiris of Lithuania. That got me wondering, what are the other members of the Denver Nuggets organization up to? Let’s take a look …

Like I mentioned above, reader stan_26 alerted us to the story about Ty Lawson signing with BC Zalgiris of Lithuania. Lawson has the ever important out-clause so he can return to the NBA, if/when action returns, and he’ll be joining former Nugget and current Toronto Raptors forward Sonny Weems in Linas Kleiza‘s home country.

Andrew posted the highlight of Mozgov's impressive sprint and dunk for his home country's squad Khimki Moscow of Russia with a couple of assists from readers, The_NGYUENNER and Army of Nugs – you've seen the highlight by now right?!? 

The head man in Denver, George Karl, has been doing a little traveling and was in Seattle on July 29th to throw out the first pitch, along with legendary head coach Lenny Wilkens (both former Sonics coaches) at Safeco Field. You can check out some photos from that event on Nuggets.com by clicking right here.

Nuggets restricted free agent, Wilson Chandler, is entertaining an offer from a team in China – said to be worth $1.7 million – thanks to reader NugNugz for the link – but the team wasn’t specified. Talk in the article is that the opt-out clause is the holdup and has Chandler considering an offer from an Italian team as well. Perhaps Ill-Will is sick of not seeing Danilo Gallinari? UPDATE: Chandler, thanks to reader Myka, has signed a deal with Olympia Milano of Italy – he’ll make around $500,000 and the deal will be re-visited after a few months.

Speaking of Gallo, the Italian forward continues to confuse me on Twitter with his double posts … one in Italian and one in English (for dummies like me!). But the kid looks to be playing ball in Italy and keeping very busy. 

Unrestricted free agent Nene Hilario has been having an interesting offseason in Colorado. Benjamin Hochman of the Denver Post posted an article on August 16th detailing Nene’s soccer exploits this summer. The best part of the article was Nene’s quote on if he’ll be playing ball overseas if the lockout persists – it’s a MUST READ QUOTE … especially if you’re of the opinion that Nene isn’t a total basketball junkie.

Another Nuggets big man, Kosta Koufos, is playing overseas with the Greek National Team and has been in Greece since July practicing with his team and trying to earn a roster spot to compete for the 2011 European Championship. I’m totally lost with how those tournaments are run and how to find schedules and whatnot. There are some good sites to get better info, but Koufos himself posted this link via Twitter on his recent events.

A little closer to home, Gary Forbes has been playing some exhibition games with the Panama National Team in Puerto Rico. He also went off for 78 points in a recent game – thanks to reader Ty Lawesome for this video. When Forbes isn’t in the “lab” aka the practice court, he’s probably on Twitter … guy is a Tweeting machine.

Rookies Kenneth Faried and Jordan Hamilton have been assaulting the West Coast with their basketball skills at the South Central Los Angeles based Drew League. The league was started by Alvin Willis in 1973 for as the website says, "a place for young men and women of South Central Los Angeles to learn life lessons through basketball." But the 2011 champ has been crowned – the LA Unified squad, back-to-back champs … featuring Hamilton (played Faried's squad for the title) and that mini-season is now over. Since then, Hamilton has been going bowling and posted a recent 143 on August 17th at the lanes in L.A. … could you beat him? He's looking for competition. And Faried, when not throwing down vicious dunks, seems to be touring around a bit and posted this recent picture from a Nike EYBL Tournament. It's good to see the two rookies playing in the same league, perhaps getting to know each other and getting some chemistry down for when they play together in Denver (they played on different Drew League teams).

Arron Afflalo seems to be traveling to different spots on the regular and he has been trolling Forbes a bit. Check out this Tweet from Afflalo about Forbes’ 78 points: click here. As usual, AAA has also been Tweeting about working on his game – can’t wait to see him back on the floor. Had to of killed him to not be healthy against Oklahoma City last season.

Kenyon Martin has been more active on Twitter recently and posted this disgusting picture on August 17th of his foot from a recent pedicure. I’m not sure where K-Mart will be playing when it’s all said and done, but at least he’s taking care of his important basketball parts.

Al Harrington wants his Twitter followers to grow, so go follow him. Other than that, we all hope Big Al is working on becoming Little Al for when the NBA action returns. And we now know that Al is working hard, check out this video of him mixing it up MMA style with a reporter who is WAY out of Big Al’s league!

Andre Miller – has been MIA as usual since his Denver Post interviews back in June 2011. The ever quiet Miller probably wont be seen or heard from much during this lockout. We just have to hope the Colorado resident is taking advantage of the great weather here and getting some much needed exercise.

J.R. Smith‘s LOVE/HATE relationship with Twitter is back on HATE as he has once again deactivated his account. When he’s in LOVE mode he’s a very active Tweeter and picture poster: HELLO WORLD! his famous morning Tweet (when he’s not asking people to stop hating). Always lots of pictures and news of his travels, so until he gets back into LOVE mode, your guess on his activities are as good as mine. Although Swish did provide us with one of the best highlights of the summer when he refused to let the kid have the bucket for free. What if J.R. had let that kid lay it in? Maybe the kid would have grown a big head and started thinking he was awesome and stopped working on his game. Then, once in high school he just tries to coast by on talent, starts getting beat in games, stops working in practice, fights with his coach, quits the team, wanders the globe like Chris McCandless from Into the Wild, and eventually dies alone on an abandoned school bus in Alaska after eating some poisonous berries? J.R. Smith might have saved that kid’s life with that block!

Chris Andersen – whereabouts unknown.

Also, check out the Nuggets nice new practice floor … aren't the Nuggets supposed to be broke or something? Who has cash for a new court in times like these???? New court here. The old court is here.

 

 

 

Nate_Timmons on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Nate_Timmons
ntimmons73@yahoo.com 

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